If you're still holding on to a glimmer of hope that SimCity can be played offline, you probably won't want to look for it coming from the developers. However, modders and the gaming community at large are always looking out for your interests and with that said, there is a simple line of code made available so any and everyone can play SimCity offline.

You would think that by now a company who has taken their once good name and smeared it through a pipe full of sewage would have learned by now to just roll with the punches and let the dirt slide off their back. No, not EA...instead the company has gone and decided to try to censor the support number that people use to get refunds, in order to limit consumers' access to legitimate help

If you follow any of our coverage here at Gaming Blend, it's unsurprising to hear that EA has been misleading saying that SimCity must always be online to play it at all. The thing is, the modder, Azzer, who achieved the offline capabilities of EA's recent SimCity release talked with Rock, Paper, Shotgun and expressed that making the game offline and saving your own cities locally to your hard drive is a pretty easy feat to achieve

Star Wars: First Assault finally gets some media assets leaked while SimCity stinks up the joint for EA. Koch breaks out Saints Row 4 and Xi3 finally puts a price on their unofficial Steam Box. These stories and more in this edition of the Weekly Recap.

Lucy, why? Why? The gaming community really is trying hard to believe that Maxis isn't just some shell of EA composed to do their bidding and screw over their own fanbase, but these new comments about Maxis being in complete control of the always-on DRM and EA not force-feeding it down the developmental pipeline just makes both EA and Maxis look incompetent.

Since the top brass at EA were dumb enough to go through with the hated and repined always-on DRM, there were consequences to be had. SimCity has been a disaster in the media circles since launch all because of the DRM, and now things have gone to the next level as a hack has been discovered that lets anyone invade any of the online cities and lay waste to them...permanently.

Hey remember way back when, we did an article about EA's viral marketing campaign and most people shrugged and said “what else is new?” well, you could consider this the poorly funded sequel that was made to cash in on the oh-so-poor reputation EA has brought upon itself. Electronic Arts continues to dig a grave that would make most undertakers envious, as one of their damage control viral marketers were outed and banned on NeoGaf.

EA you're about to get the smackdown laid down upon thee by none other than the gaming community itself, as a hacker has gone and electrified the gaming world by proving that EA, you lied about SimCity not being able to run in offline mode. Not only did the hacker achieve a great feat, he put it on YouTube for added proof.

EA has constantly been running around getting Maxis to say that SimCity cannot be altered to run in offline mode for single-player interaction, that the game was designed from the ground up for multiplayer. Well, John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun managed to get an interview with an engineer at Maxis who wished to remain anonymous, and the engineer says SimCity can run offline with minimal effort from the design team.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has always been vocal about always-on DRM; always championing consumers and warning gamers about the hazards of this abominable service. Things really came to a head when RPS's John Walker finally threw away the niceties and called always-on DRM a disease and that it's the broken game that needs to go away.

Amid all the controversy over SimCity's troubled launch, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that some gamers are actually having fun with it. YouTuber Calvin Chan has published a stylish video tribute to the metropolis he created.

Over the weekend I thought Maxis did a great job of going at the problem trying to resolve the issues created by always-on DRM. Apparently after Lucy Bradshaw tried to amicably restore peace between Maxis and gamers, someone at EA recognized that Maxis was actually on the road to redemption and decided to hold a gun to the Maxis employee running the Twitter account.

Crisis almost averted. General manager at Maxis, Lucy Bradshaw, has sent out a new update letting gamers know that SimCity's launch fiasco is almost a thing of the past (although I'm hoping the memories resonate well enough within the gaming community that this always-on stuff never repeats itself again). In the post Bradshaw states that the game isn't quite 100% but give or take a few days and they'll get there.

Maxis wants to take all the brunt of the SimCity fallout from gamers, consumers and fans alike. They don't want you putting the blame on EA, even though anyone with a single-digit I.Q., and hayballs for eyes could tell you that EA is to blame. Nevertheless, General Manager of Maxis, Lucy Bradshaw, is trying to play the deflection game for the Imperialist Publishing Nation known as EA.

There's no sense promoting a product if the service it's attached to doesn't work, right? Well, that's EA's thinking at this point. The director of marketing has decided to halt online advertisements for SimCity in the way of all the negative press generated because of the company's decision to force everyone online with the always-on DRM.